And yet, those ideas somehow more frustrate than anything else, as Proliferation lacks some of the core things such a book would need to actually be interesting. For one, the setting is so unexplained as to be frustrating, and the book's plot arcs seem to just reset and go nowhere repeatedly. For another, the characters are largely uninteresting and every faction we follow is just seemingly made up of assholes: why do we care about any of these people? What do they want in life? I have no idea for large parts. And then there's the fact that the book relies on certain tropes - like a character committing self-harm to mitigate some kind of unspecified disease - without any justification, and uses them really badly. In short, I cannot recommend Proliferation at all.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Self Harm, Suicide Attempts and Suicidal Ideation, Drinking. These ideas aren't really handled very well either, just to be clear.
Plot Summary:
Haplopol is a legend - the first of the Independent City States of Morganis (ICSM) which were built after the fall of the Old World and used advanced computers and technology to look after their citizens. Or supposedly - what remains of Haplopol is an inactive city with no sign of humanity within it, and the other ICSM cities are either destroyed or long gone. But one day it becomes clear to certain factions that Haplopol has somehow reawakened, and its treasures, and that of the other ICSM cities, are now there to be explored.
Dryden is an anthropologist whose has made studying the ICSM cities his specialty....and so when a Protectorate General comes to him with news that Haplopol is awakened and they want to take him with them so that they can claim control over it...for defensive purposes, Dryden is ecstatic. But as he discovers the wonders of the city, he soon discovers that the general is far less benevolent in his intent towards the city and its technology...and just as importantly, that the cities themselves are dangerous technology capable of warping their human residents.
Lexie is a former pirate who thought she was just being sent (for a good price) to deliver a message to the strange Gungivite people about the awakening of Haplopol. But she soon finds herself alone amongst the Gungivites, who seem to be strange cultists with powerful technology...which they intend to use to stop Haplopol and its sibling cities from causing immeasurable harm. And they may need something from Lexie's old pirate days to do it.
Together, Lexie, Dryden, and others soon find themselves in a world in which the dangerous technology of the past is reawakening to once more cause devastation....and they will need desperate action, and a lot of luck, to prevent an utter catastrophe...
Proliferation is set in a post apocalyptic world (which seems like it was better explained in the prior book, Detonation, from that book's weak plot summary) where most of humanity now has limited technology - no computers, guns are generally forbidden, and advanced technology use (from machines of the past) does result (in most places) in attacks by dangerous creatures called Retchers. Some cities of the old world like Portland still exist, although even there the tech is limited. There are also a bunch of factions involved in this world, such as a faction comprised of an alliance between anti-technology religious zealots (the Essentialists) and military-based fascists, seemingly from Japan (despite this book being largely set on what was the Pacific Northwest Coast of the US) as well as a couple of other factions that really aren't well defined or explained. Really that's a thing with a lot of this world - unless we directly see something, it doesn't go explained and even then the book kind of just assumes you'll figure it out, even when it's not obvious or apparent.
In this world we have a couple of main point of view characters - for the entirety of the book that's Lexie and Dryden, but also we occasionally get POV chapters from the lead villain General Hatsuo and Dryden's ex-wife Alayna, who sort of becomes a third protagonist in the book's second half. And yet despite seeing the book through these characters' eyes, we don't really get much feel for who these characters are outside of the context of this plot. Lexie was a pirate and has a sick mom - what has she been doing since her pirate crew disbanded (i don't know), how does she know her sociopathic but friendly mercenary friend (i don't know and it's more baffling how she doesn't know how sociopathic he is), etc. Dryden is obsessed with the cities to the point of naivete and haunted (and drinks) by the accidental death of his brother-in-law and his inability to fulfill his promises to his son....but does he do anything else, where did he grow up, does he have any chemistry with his wife or son? Nope. Hell General Hatsuo is a mustache twirling villain who I guess just wants power for its own sake, and the book emphasizes how evil he is by making him think repeatedly about how he might rape various women in his vicinity (YUCK). None of these characters gets much depth in this book, and nor do they or any of the minor characters from factions they encounter (who tend to all be assholes), so there's very little reason to care about any of them.
Still, this might have been forgivable if the story had interesting ideas as part of its plot, but while the story has ideas, it can't seemingly commit to actually exploring them in any interesting or coherent way. A major part of the book's first act revelations are for example that the ICSM cities all were programmed to help humanity, but the scope of that programming allowed them to do tremendous harm to those very same humans...such as by influencing their minds to make them more compliant with what the cities feel is necessary for everyone's survival. It's a big deal in the plot! And it has no impact whatosever, as none of the major characters are affected by it and the cities seem to be pretty easily controllable by those major characters. The debates between the factions and what not and the conflict between these factions? I barely understand the factions to get them and they all basically go nowhere. A major part of the story for example is the major antagonist acting in ways that he tries to hide from his superiors, but why his superiors might be upset with his gaining power, I have no idea (he never even thinks about using such power to seize power from them).
And this extends even to the structure of the story: the first act is a race to stop the bad guys from activating the first two cities, which at the end, the "good" guys just concede the point and run away and we just skip ahead to the cities being active in the next act. A character hinted to be major from the very first little prologue snippet as being part of this war against a machine enemy in the East shows up on occasion and then disappears and does absolutely nothing to this book's plot (she apparently might be a major character in the next book?). Lexie is rightfully outraged over a bit of murder done in her first chapter by the Gungivite faction and then promptly later mourns the very murderer of that faction...while she has very little reaction to the death of her precious mom, who was her motivation all the while earlier. A side character is set up to lose his hand or worse by the general in one of the General's POV chapters which surely would outrage two of our protagonists, but if it happens we never see it and that side character still manages to communicate important info to both protagonists from off page after that somehow. Nothing connects together, nothing is followed through, and the result is just so so so frustrating and makes me feel like I wasted my time reading this. Even the end of the conflict comes when a character we haven't seen pretty much the entire book shows up as a deus ex machina to stop the continued devastation.
Oh and I haven't even gotten into some really problematic elements of this book. For example, there's a character introduced in act 2 who commits acts of self harm (cutting himself mainly) to....I guess deal with some weird illness that causes him to flashback (or flashforward? It's never explained). And then, as part of the story, one of our protagonists further ENABLES him to commit self harm as if it's acceptable or normal or something that isn't a mental health problem. Seriously a bad message. Another character's backstory involves the tragic death of a disabled person, which isn't ideal either.
Like listen, is this book trying to say something? I'm sure, there's some ideas there about AIs and the dangers of interpretive programming and about humanity and how one can become separated from it. But it's all so muddled due to all of the above that it made me more angry than interested and other than I guess other reviewers finding parts of this world cool, I can't see why this is a SPSFC4 semifinalist.
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